Author Archives: brucescribe

Jul 08 2014
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Law

Ottawa to the courts: Don’t be so judgy

 

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If certain Tory Members of Parliament are beginning to suspect that the bull’s eyes painted on their backs are not, in fact, figments of their fevered, paranoid imaginations, they might be right.

Never in recent times has the gulf between the executive and judicial branches of government been so cavernous as now. Consider the latest trouncing of the Harperites by the courts, as reported recently by the Globe and Mail’s justice writer Sean Fine:

“The Conservative government’s latitude to choose its own policies was curtailed yet again on Friday when a (Federal Court) judge called health-care cuts for failed refugee claimants a form of ‘cruel and unusual treatment’ and ruled them unconstitutional.”

What’s more, he observed, “So rare is the use of Section 12 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms – ‘cruel and unusual treatment or punishment’ – that neither the government nor the refugees’ representatives were able to identify a single successful claim outside of criminal cases.”

Hardly able to contain his glee, Lorne Waldman, the lawyer for the Canadian Association of Refugee Doctors told Mr. Fine, “It’s huge – it opens up a whole new claim that we can make when we want to challenge government conduct.” 

For its part, the government remains undeterred. True to form, Immigration Minister Chris Alexander stiff-upper-lipped his reaction to the ruling, insisting he will appeal. “Failed claimants and those from safe countries like the U.S. or Europe should not be entitled to better health care than Canadians receive.” 

This is, of course, utter nonsense. Decent health care for refugee claimants (failed or successful) does not preclude similar service and treatment for citizens and immigrants. It never has.

But it is a response that’s typical of this government when it has been thwarted in pursuing its sometimes incomprehensible social agenda. And the whining, it seems, is growing louder with each passing day. 

In April, the Supreme Court slapped Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s hand by ruling that, no, he can’t just go ahead and make the Senate an elective body without the consent of the provinces, because that, dear boy, would be patently unconstitutional.

“The Senate is a core component of the Canadian federal structure of government,” the ruling read. “As such, changes that affect its fundamental nature and role engage the interests of the stakeholders in our constitutional design – i.e. the federal government and the provinces – and cannot be achieved by Parliament acting alone.”

To which Mr. Harper rejoined, just a wee bit petulantly, “(it is) a decision for the status quo, a status quo that is supported by virtually no Canadian. . .(the country has no interest in) “a bunch of constitutional negotiations. We know full well that there’s no consensus among the provinces, there’s no willingness to reopen the Canadian constitution.”

Only the month before, the Supreme Court ruled, in a precedent-setting decision, that Ottawa had no right to retroactively annul the early-parole entitlement of three federal inmates in British Columbia.

The government’s March 2011 legislation effectively, “deprive(d) the three respondents of the possibility of being considered for early day parole, which was an expectation they had had at the time they were sentenced (and) had the effect of punishing the respondents again,” the court found.

Again, the Tories were unrepentant. “Our Conservative government has been clear,” Jason Tamming, a spokesman for Public Safety Minister Steven Blaney, declared. “We do not believe that white-collar criminals and drug dealers should be released after a mere one-sixth of their sentence.”

Then, there were the kerfuffles over imposing longer prison times (nope, no can do), closing a B.C. drug clinic (we’d rather you not) and even a sketchy appointment to the Supreme Court, itself (nice try, pal, but no cigar).

In all of this, the preponderance of evidence yields one of two possible conclusions: That the various levels that comprise Canada’s justice system has it out for the sitting government and the merry pranksters it calls its cabinet ministers; or that the federal Tories know more about the ideological preferences of their voting base than they do about the actual law.

I might wish for the former, and all the court-issued bull’s eyes; but I fear that the latter is closer to the truth.

 

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Jul 07 2014
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General

The quiet joy of a smart summer read

 

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I approach The Atlantic magazine’s annual “Ideas Issue” the way a fan of Beatles’ music approaches a vintage vinyl of the “White Album”, which is to say: reverentially, lovingly and oh so carefully. 

After all, in both, there’s so much to appreciate, comprehend and, of course, misapprehend. 

Truly, consider the fun that can be had by all in the breaking nights of a martini-soaked summer by arguing the significance of Helter Skelter’s lyrics (“When I get to the bottom I go back to the top of the slide/ Where I stop and I turn and I go for a ride/Till I get to the bottom and I see you again”) and the fact that this year’s “Ideas” edition of The Atlantic features line drawings of both John Lennon and Paul McCartney on its front cover. 

It’s kismit, baby. 

And so, apparently, is innovation, even in magazines these days.

Explaining why he chose not one but three covers to grace his publication this month (one after another), The Atlantic’s creative director, Darhil Crooks, writes, “The theme of The Atlantic’s annual Ideas Issue this year is creativity – which is a hard concept to define, let alone to illustrate. We could have gone with an illuminated lightbulb, or photographed Brad Pitt painting at an easel, but those options didn’t seem very. . .creative. Most of the time, we derive our cover image from one specific story. But this time we thought, why not produce a collection of covers, using each one to showcase a different approach to examining and conveying creativity?”

Why not, indeed? 

Cover Number One features the iconic songwriting duo from the sixties and asks whether genius is a solitary encumbrance, or a shared misery. Cover Number Two examines the science of creativity and whether mental illness and IQ are inextricably linked (something I’ve wondered for just about my entire life). Cover Number Three recounts “tales of creativity”, the “breakthroughs, borrowings, revisions, and bold decisions behind the work of highly creative people, from Beyonce to the lead designer of Google Glass.” 

In a monolithic media industry that believes it enhances itself by repeating itself (think Toronto Star and Rob Ford), The Atlantic manages its originality almost defiantly.

Here, there’s James Parker on “The Twee Revolution. . .a terrifying aesthetic” that is “taking over America.” thanks to the likes of filmmaker Wes Anderson, actress Zooey Deschanel and “Brooklynites on bicycles”.

Here, there’s a piece by Joe Pinsker on “punctuated equilibrium” in which he asks whether “autocorrect” will “save the apostrophe, and slow language’s evolution. . .(because) our brains seem to become less vigilant when we know a grammatical safety net will catch us.”

A somewhat more sober article by Gordon Goldstein, a former member of the U.S. delegation to the World Conference on International Telecommunications, asks whether the Internet, as we know it, is fated to go the way of the dinosaur. 

“The World Wide Web celebrated its 25th birthday recently,” he writes. “Today, the global network serves almost three billion people, and hundreds of thousands more join each day. If the Internet were a country, its economy would be among the five largest in the world.”

On the other hand, he notes, “fierce and rising geopolitical conflict over control of the global network threatens to create a balkanized system – what some technorati, including Google’s executive chairman, Eric Schmidt, have called “the splinternet.’”

That would be a shame. Without the free research and weird facts and figures literally at my fingertips, I’d probably have to stop scribbling for a living and do something honest if as equally unremunerative, such as farming.

Still, The Atlantic always manages to put me in touch with my inner reader, the one I knew well as a kid growing up without the benefits ample screen time. 

The Internet has taught us how to scan for information quickly. We’ve forgotten how to drink deeply from the well spring of ideas that a good, slow summer read offers. Thank God, we still have a few old-fashioned, paper-bound magazines like The Atlantic to remind us. 

 

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Jul 04 2014
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Society

Canada’s civically disengaged citizenry

 

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The stunning news isn’t that New Brunswick’s citizens comprise the second-most civically engaged population in Canada (only Prince Edward Islanders are more inclined to head to the polls). 

The stunning news us that we manage to pull off that feat with a score of only 5.2 out of 10 relative to other regions in an international assessment of voting habits. 

The tidings come courtesy of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development’s new “interactive” website which lets users compare and contrast their region’s performance according to eight indicators of “well-being”: Civic engagement, access to services, safety, health, income, environment, jobs, and education.

According to the Paris-based group of countries established in 1961 to promote world industry and trade, P.E.I. ranks 6.6 in its fondness for the polling station, followed by New Brunswick and, then, in shamefully descending order: Quebec, 4.5; Nova Scotia, 4.3; Ontario, 4.2; British Columbia, 4.0; Manitoba, 3.8; Alberta, 3.0; Northwest Territories, 2.6; Newfoundland and Labrador, 2.3; and Nunavut, 0.9.

This puts New Brunswick in the bottom 47 per cent of the entire OECD. Still, that’s nothing compared with Canada as a whole. Among the OECD’s 34 member countries, ours ranked 26.

Moreover, “concerning inequalities across regions in civic engagement, Canada is in position 25/33.” That’s doing just slightly better than Chile and Mexico. Meanwhile, Estonia, Poland and the Czech Republic continue to eat our lunch at the ballot box.

Of course, the news isn’t all bad. 

 The OECD says, among member regions, New Brunswick occupies the top 31, 29, 10, 33, 39, and 33 per cent, respectively, for access to services, education, environment, income, health, and safety.           

The province’s mortality rate is eight deaths per 1,000 people. The murder rate is one in 100,000. Life expectancy is 80 years. Meanwhile, in Canada, only Nova Scotia and Newfoundland and Labrador boast cleaner environments.

As for dear, old Canuckistan, compared with the rest of the OECD pack ours is the fifth-richest, eighth-cleanest and eight healthiest nation.

Naturally, not everyone is buying what the OECD is selling. “If people think, as a result of this, OK now we’ve got the definitive statement of where New Brunswick ranks in Canada, well then they’ve really got it wrong and that’s actually dangerous,” Ronald Colman executive director of the Genuine Progress Indicator for Atlantic Canada, told the Telegraph-Journal this week. “Everyone likes simplicity, everyone likes quick results. . .but it can be a little bit tricky if you run roughshod over some of the more detailed and important evidence.”

In fact, regarding the OECD’s definition of civic engagement, Mr. Colman wonders whether the organization is missing some useful nuance. “I would go so far as to say if you have very poor choices at the polls – if you have two bad choices – maybe not voting could be a sign of the poor quality of the candidates rather than voter apathy. . .You can’t just use one indicator to demonstrate something.”

With respect to Mr. Colman, that dog won’t hunt.

A poor field of candidates is never a legitimate reason for not voting. If it were, then citizens of this country would have had to resign themselves to their ill-fitting, authoritarian yokes long ago. 

Besides, in the parlors of party politics, one man’s poutine is another man’s poison. I’m not especially enamored of regressive, scare-mongering right-wingers. My neighbour, with whom I get along just fine as long as we don’t discuss his theories about roving bands of juvenile delinquents, thinks they’re swell. 

Who’s right? Who knows? Does any of this curtail our choices in this democracy to the point of nullification?  

Inasmuch as any respected, 52-year-old economic development organization’s statistics are trustworthy, I’m prepared to take the OECD’s findings about Canada’s comparatively poor showing as a civically engaged society at face value.

More’s the pity. 

In a world where wars and sectarian savagery have turned 50 million men, women and children into refugees – the largest number since the end of WWII – the right to vote is an increasingly precious commodity.

Certainly, it’s no mere bauble for tossing away when irked.

 

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Jul 03 2014
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Municipal Affairs, Politics

Mayor Rob Ford’s unerring instinct for survival

 

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Like the proverbial cat of lore, though a conspicuously rotund one, Toronto Mayor Rob Ford is possessed of nine lives – one for nearly every fatal blunder possible in the brutal cosmos of elected office.

About the only outrage this recovering substance abuser hasn’t committed in his relatively short career in front of the footlights is an old-fashioned sex scandal involving a mistress whom the media’s hound dogs reveal to be a foreign spy.

Everything else – from public drunkenness to smoking crack cocaine with “persons of interest” to Hog Town’s sturdy constabulary – he has covered with enviable bravado and originality. It now remains to be seen whether he manages his public reconstruction with equal dollops of brio. 

He’s off to a truly Fordian start.

“When I look back on some of the things I have said and some of the things I did when I was using, I am ashamed, embarrassed, and humiliated,” Mr. Ford practically wailed before a crowd of Toronto reporters who had gathered at City Hall on Monday, exactly 24 hours after his release from 60 days of self-imposed rehabilitation at a facility far from prying eyes.

He said he was “wrong” and had no one to blame, “but no one”, but himself. He talked about enduring “some of the darkest moments” of his life as he relented to treatment that, nonetheless, “saved” his life. He blathered on about spending a good deal of his time in charge of Canada’s largest city – a metropolis of between two and six million souls, depending on how one parses census data – “in complete denial” about his “personal demons.”

Then he launched into a vigorous defence of his political record and vowed to represent the people of his city with matchless determination and characteristic devotion. 

The meta message, therefore, was along certain lines thusly: “Sorry for all the bother folks. but I’m all better now. Let’s move on; nothing to see here anymore. . .Anybody got a candy bar I can scarf? Getting off booze and drugs is hungry business. . .Gotta tell you. . .Ooo, is that a donut I see?” 

The degree to which one believes Hizzoner’s declarations of personal cleanliness and sobriety depends entirely on one’s perspectives about public office and what it may or may not do to those who serve at the democratic will of the electorate. 

Over the past few decades, Toronto has become a true melting pot of people from divergent world cultures. Some have zero tolerance for the sort of shenanigans that has typified Mr. Ford’s regime. Others are decidedly sanguine about their mayor’s peccadilloes and proclivities, if only because he has deliberately made a populist of  himself – a posture they appreciate. 

He’s no elite, they say. He’s a man of the people. And like any man of the people, he has his faults. We should forgive him for these, shouldn’t we? At least he’s not a nail-biting, politically correct elitist. 

Better yet, he doesn’t go around shooting people in the dark, as burgermeisters of many less enlightened cities in disadvantaged nations often do when their critics cross the line and commit the unpardonable offence of questioning authority.

But if this is, indeed, our litmus test for municipal leadership in this country, then we have reached a truly sorry state of affairs. 

Mr. Ford’s crimes against common decency demonstrate his colossally poor judgement. His tirades – drunken or otherwise – against his colleagues reveal dimensions of immaturity and paranoia that would otherwise fill a therapist’s calendar for years to come. 

He has yet to apologize personally to his rival for mayor, Karen Stintz, for outrageously inappropriate remarks he made about her while sucking back a few brewskis in a bar in April. 

And he has never acknowledged the shellacking his behaviour has visited upon Toronto in the court of world opinion. According to a CBC item posted to its website recently, “A new media-monitoring analysis suggests the Rob Ford saga received more intensive media coverage in the United States than any other Canadian news story since the turn of the century.”

Toronto mayoralty candidate Olivia Chow is right when she declares, as she did to the Globe and Mail this week, “The question is not whether Rob Ford is clean and sober. The issue is that he is a failed mayor.”

Still, will that matter four months from now when municipal election day rolls around?

This cat’s come back from the brink before.

 

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Jun 26 2014
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Business

Praise be for our disruptive human tendencies

 

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For those of us who do not spend our every idle moment glued to LinkedIn or any number of other warehouses of business management trends, the phrase “disruptive innovation” makes about as much sense as particle physics. In fact, the former may be even more inscrutable than the latter.

So, here is a quick and easy definition, courtesy of Clayton Christensen, the Harvard Business School professor who coined the term and wrote a book on the subject back in 1997: “Disruptive innovation takes root initially in simple applications at the bottom of a market and then relentlessly moves up market, eventually displacing competitors.”

The idea is that “as companies tend to innovate faster than their customers’ needs evolve, most organizations eventually end up producing products or services that are actually too sophisticated, too expensive and too complicated for many in their market.”

Traditionally, this niche approach to marketing and technology development secures higher rates of return on investment and better, more sustained profits, because expert consumers will spend money on gear that they think will separate them from the herd. And herein lies the peril.

By focussing on these so-called “sustaining innovations” producers “unwittingly open the door to disruptive innovations at the bottom end of the market.” An innovation that is disruptive essentially upsets the apple cart by allowing “a whole new population of consumers at the bottom of the market access to a product or service that was historically only accessible to consumers with a lot of money or a lot of skill.”

Call it extinction by inattention. But whatever you call it, examples of disruptive technologies, processes and services are everywhere. 

Think about that smart phone in your pocket. Once upon a time, not so very long ago, it was a ludicrously larded device that, conventional wisdom insisted, would be forever relegated to the lifestyles of the rich and powerful. Now, thanks to some cheap and efficient applications in hardware and software, it’s as common and as pricey as a set of all-weather tires on a Nissan Versa.

New “disruptives” available in the near future will likely include: embedded sensors in that  smart phone you’re caressing that tell you whether you’ve brushed your teeth properly; wearable technologies that, among things, track your sleep patterns; and, naturally, driverless cars that eliminate the dangers of texting while cruising down the highway.

Not everyone thinks this stuff is all it’s cracked up to be. New Yorker writer and Harvard history professor Jill Lepore, in a brilliantly argued essay this month, suggests that Mr. Christensen essentially kites his data by finding facts that are not in evidence. Some of the biggest “disrupters”, she says, are the very firms the theory predicts will and do fail. 

Besides, she suggests, innovation is always inherently upsetting. Companies rise and fall just as easily according to the ephemeral rules of luck and timing. In this case, size and longevity do not necessarily matter. 

Frankly, I take comfort in both views, especially as they apply to southeastern New Brunswick and its acknowledged centre of enterprise, Metro Moncton.

Here, of course, disruption has been our cardinal métier since anyone can remember. 

Once, we were all about shipping and shipbuilding. Then we weren’t. Once, we were all about wholesaling and retailing. Then we weren’t. 

Now, we’re all about IT, multi-modal transportation, health care, and software development. 

Each bump along the road to sustained economic progress elevated disrupters and, in the process, changed our local economy mostly for the better. 

And not just our economy. 

The Petitcodiac River flowed freely for thousands of years before our forebears erected a causeway between Moncton and Riverview in 1968. We disrupted it. Then, a few years ago we disrupted it again by permanently opening the gates. Now, the river attracts surfers from California, desperate to ride the renewed tidal bore for 90 minutes at a go. Disruption? You bet, and thanks be for it. 

In the end, we engineer what we need. Disruption? Perchance, thy name is a multi-purpose, downtown events centre.

 

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Jun 25 2014
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Business, Economy, Employment, Politics

Bring us your tired, yearning to work

 

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Through no fault of their own, 50 million people around the world are rootless and stateless. The victims of wars and warlords, dictators and economic dissolution, they wander the Earth as refugees, as unwilling nomads, and in numbers not recorded since the end of the second, great, European conflagration of the 20th Century.

Meanwhile, the Canadian government – once a beacon of light in the United Nation’s Human Development Index – plays a crass round of poker in which it chooses those immigrants it wants, those it will merely tolerate and those it would rather wash its hands of entirely. 

The latest incarnation of this game of drones is the new regime governing the nation’s Temporary Foreign Workers Program.

Employment Minister Jason Kenney says he’s doing Canadians a favour by restricting the number of international grunts businesses in this country can hire and installing punitive fines on  those who flout the fresh regulations. 

As CTV reports: “Under the new rules, employers in places with high unemployment rates won’t be allowed to hire temporary foreign workers in the lowest wage and skills groups in the accommodation, food service and retail sectors. Companies will also be required to re-apply each year to have low-wage TFW’s, instead of every two years. The cost of that will rise to $1,000 per employee, up from $275.”

Mr. Kenney justifies his decision in typically bellicose terms: “As opposed to being a last resort, in too many cases it’s (the TWF) become a first or only resort. . .That is unacceptable. I don’t care how tight the local labour market is, you shouldn’t be setting up a business and spending money on capital for a business if you don’t have the human capital to staff it.”

Don’t you just love the way these guys talk? 

Human beings become “human capital”, commodities that governments can and do rate and rank according to their own political exigencies and circumstances. 

At the same time, the minister in charge of labour markets doesn’t give a fig about the condition of labour markets if giving a fig means annoying a partisan base of low-end citizen workers/voters who, once their pogey runs down, can’t find sufficient numbers of mc-jobs to qualify them for another, ritualistic term of government-sanctioned, fully funded couch potatodom. How exquisitely NDP of him.

All this from a government who thinks it perfectly reasonable to lecture Atlantic Canadian provinces on their habitual use of Employment Insurance to actually sustain a labour market that backstops at least four, bone-fide seasonal industries (fishing, forestry, tourism, and agriculture).

In fact, on this subject in this country, almost no one looks good. Abuses of the system are systemic and rampant. And no government – Tory or Grit – has ever figured out a compelling, convincing, comprehensive, rational fix. 

But why should they bother? After all, no one in this country gets elected by insisting that low-wage foreign workers are only here because native-born and naturalized citizens don’t possess the skills that commercial enterprises actually need.

Have you ever worked a naan oven at 5 am in the morning? I didn’t think so. 

On the other hand, too many employers in this country work these people like virtual slaves; gaming the system at every opportunity to feather their marginal nests. As there are no federal oversights, no provincial or municipal protections that practically apply, what else would we as fine, upstanding Canucks expect?

Today, according to the Canadian Council for Refugees, “the number of migrant workers in Canada has increased by 70 per cent in the last five years. Canada has been shifting towards a reliance on migrant labour. In 2008, for the first time, the number of temporary foreign workers in Canada exceeded the total number of permanent residents admitted in the same year. At the end of 2012, the gap had grown: There were 338,189 temporary foreign workers in Canada on December 1, 2012, compared to 257,515 new permanent residents.”

Rather than revile these people publicly, we should embrace them as essential contributors to our society. Or, have we become too hardened to the plight of the world’s rootless that we have forgotten our own history?

 

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Jun 24 2014
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Culture, Economy

On culture, New Brunswick is getting it right

 

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When the leaders of New Brunswick’s major political parties agree, it’s either cause for celebration or reason to head for the hills. After all, what are the odds that three public office holders of markedly dissimilar ideological pedigrees could be thoroughly right about a single issue on which they concur?

Generally, at least some degree of politically calculated equivocation imbues opposition response to an official announcement. But when it comes to developing the cultural sector in this province, Messrs. David Alward, Brian Gallant and Dominic Cardy truly are three musketeers in silk ties and summer suits.

For the sake one of the few sectors in this benighted neck of the woods that actually generates more insight than acrimony, let’s hope they stay that way.

Conservative Premier David Award is correct when he says – as he did last week – that “creativity is at the root of our growth as province and a people.” Would that more of this particular commodity sloshed around in the local economy. 

Still, it’s heartening to hear that his new and improved cultural policy, which updates an earlier iteration from 2002, reflects his government’s commitment to “provide the support to allow our creators to flourish.”

Given that the premier’s triumphant return to power in the fall is far from assured, it’s equally encouraging to hear Liberal tourism, heritage and culture critic Brian Kenny – presumably channelling his boss Mr. Gallant – state that “any time that we can give them (cultural entrepreneurs and workers) a helping hand and help them move forward is positive.” 

Indeed, enthused NDP Leader Dominic Cardy, “We’re happy to give this plan our support. Let’s make sure that the follow-through is there. . .Keep. . .supporting the arts and culture community.”  

For now, the plan is to pour an “additional $3 million” into this segment of the economy to, among other things, “increase operational funding for professional arts organizations; operating grants to New Brunswick’s key cultural institutions; funding for. . .professional artists, through the New Brunswick Arts Board; (and) funding for enhanced First Nations engagement processes as (these) relate to archaeological resources.”

The policy would also establish a Community Cultural Places program. . .“for organized and arms-length built heritage advocacy and. . .community museums.” It would “provide funding for activities related to community commemorations of historic events.” And it would reinstate and expand the “touring and presenting program for New Brunswick arts organizations and presenters.” 

We can, of course, argue whether three million bucks is enough to reach these goals. We can even debate whether the province can afford this comparatively modest sum, given the horrendous short- and long-term fiscal challenges it faces. 

What should be irrefutable, however, is the remarkable contribution that cultural industries make to the national and regional economies of this country.

Study after study – notably those by Statistics Canada and the Conference Board of Canada – have settled the case: The arts sector is the little engine the could, would and does, year after year, decade after decade.

“Our results demonstrate that culture is an indispensable part of the Canadian economy, permeating and adding value across the entire (spectrum). GDP from the culture sector amounted to more than $33 billion, on average, between 1996 and 2001. Similarly, the culture sector employed more than half-a-million workers, on average, over the same period. (Moreover) employment in the culture sector grew faster than that of the overall economy during this period.”

That’s an excerpt from a seminal 2004 study by StatsCan researcher Vik Singh. Four years later, the Conference Board added its own authoritative voice to the discussion: “Increasingly, countries around the world, as well as cities and regions, are recognizing the pervasive role that a dynamic culture sector plays as a magnet for talent, an enhancer of economic performance, and a catalyst for prosperity.”

The reason is simple: Talented, innovative, entrepreneurial people abhor a vacuum. If a community’s public spaces have nothing to offer beyond cinder blocks, parking lots, big-box stores and off-ramps, then business leaders won’t come. And, more importantly, if some do, they won’t stay. 

That’s something on which we can all agree and, now, our ritualistically fractious and partisan political leaders apparently do.

 

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Jun 20 2014
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Energy, Oil and Gas

Taking stock of our car-loving culture

 

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The horses stand sullenly in the barn where they have dwelt, uninterrupted, for two years. Has it really been that long since my wife and I hopped into their saddles and sped away down the street and around the lake, the soft summer wind peeling the frowns from our faces?

The “horses” – that’s what we call our twin, hybrid two-wheelers with the fancy side bags for boxed lunches and bottles of wine. We bought them from a local outfit six years ago when we became convinced that global warming would doom the infernal combustion engine to a proper extinction. Humanity, we thought, would finally see the error of its fossil-fuel ways. Everyone would soon be riding bikes. We were just ahead of the curve in southeastern New Brunswick. 

Ah yes, how young we were.

Today, the oil and gas industry is pumping away harder than ever. Production in the tar sands of Alberta, where bitumen is king, has never been higher. Now, the only fear policy makers and politicians nurse is whether they can get the stuff to market before competition drives the price down to commercially unsustainable levels. 

That’s certainly what Canada’s finance minister, Joe Oliver, fears. 

Speaking in Ottawa recently, he said weaning the nation from its dependence on American buyers of its black gold is, “an obvious strategic imperative.” Moreover, he added, “the Canadian economy has been bolstered by resource revenue and it’s important that we continue to see that revenue sustained and grow. . .(It’s an) asset that Canadians consider absolutely fundamental to their identity.”

I’m a Canadian, but I’m not sure I will ever perceive non-renewable reserves of oil and gas as innate to my sense of self. Aren’t they more or less necessary evils, the consumption of which we would all do well to curtail? 

Yves Bourgeois of the Urban and Community Studies Institute at the University of New Brunswick might agree. “A lot of people are interested in public or shared transportation because for low-income people it’s often the only means of transportation, he told the Saint John Telegraph-Journal recently. “Decision-makers in municipal or provincial governments are often told they need to fund public transportation because it helps low-income people. . .in New Brunswick, there’s actually a compelling economic argument to fund more shared transportation.”

Still, we remain a defiantly car-loving culture. 

According to the Institute, this province boasts (if that is the word) the third-highest rate of automobile ownership in the country – 1.55 cars per home. The national average is 1.47. Reports the T-J: “They also put five per cent more kilometres on their private vehicles than the Canadian average.”

Is there a causal relationship between this and another disturbing trend in New Brunswick?

“A report released by the Canadian Public Health Association says that 30 per cent of the adult population is obese in Atlantic Canada,” the CBC reported in March. “In New Brunswick, the highest rates of obesity are in the northwest, where 27.4 per cent of adults are obese and in the Acadian Peninsula, where 28.8 per cent are obese.”

Said Stephane Robichaud of the New Brunswick Health Council: “We see that we have a higher rate than the rest of the country of people dying before the age of 75 for treatable or preventable causes.”

In fact, my decision to park the car and zip around on bikes was inspired, in part, by the fact that I was turning 50, that dreaded threshold one crosses when one can no longer kid oneself about maintaining youthful vitality without expending an ounce of effort. 

Still, as the first, fresh days of summer arrive, it’s not too late to take stock of our present lot. My wife and I are planning new excursions, new adventures in cycling thanks to our sturdy horses. For now, as the weather begins to cooperate, the Nissan will stay in the driveway, and once again, we will be in the wind

 

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Jun 20 2014
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Democracy, Government, Privacy

Warning: Canada’s privacy watchdog also bites

 

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Well, now, that didn’t take long. It seems the honeymoon had only just begun before the newlyweds were hissing and spitting at each other. 

And they all said it was a match made in parliamentary heaven, that it would last, if not forever, at least until the Harper wagon train pulled up its stakes for the last time and headed back home towards the setting sun.

But, in an interview with the Globe and Mail earlier this week, Daniel Therrien, Canada’s new privacy commissioner, took a largely unexpected leap and publicly repudiated the federal government’s interpretation of a recent Supreme Court decision on online privacy in Canada. He even termed parts of the controversial Bill C-13 – which seeks, among other things, immunity for telcos that voluntarily relinquish subscriber information to authorities – as nugatory.

“At a minimum, I would say the immunity clause in Bill C-13 becomes essentially meaningless,” he told the newspaper. “The Supreme Court agrees that this is sensitive information, that it is entitled to constitutional protection. That is a huge clarification. . .So the idea there would be voluntary disclosure from service providers to law enforcement agencies – it is now clear that is not going to pass constitutional muster. I think that is clear.”

In his statement to the House of Commons Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights (JUST) on Bill C-13, he was just as categorical: “We are concerned this broad language (in the Bill) could lead to a rise in additional voluntary disclosures and informal requests. This is of particular concern with private-sector companies that are otherwise prohibited from disclosing personal information without consent under PIPEDA or substantially similar legislation. In essence, this could amount to permissive access without court approval and oversight.”

He added: “Canadians expect that their service providers will keep their information confidential and that personal information will not be shared with government authorities without their express consent, clear lawful authority or a warrant.

This does not sound like the guy about whom a panel of privacy experts warned the Prime Minister in an email prior to Mr. Therrien’s appointment earlier this month.

“With great respect and without any intended slight on his abilities, we feel obligated to object to the Government’s recently announced appointee for Privacy Commissioner of Canada,” the letter noted. “As long-standing Assistant Deputy Attorney General for Public Safety, Mr. Therrien lacks the perspective and experience necessary to immediately tackle Canada’s many privacy problems. . .Mr. Therrien’s direct responsibility for and oversight of the programs he will now be called upon to advocate against will exacerbate the already steep learning curve with which he is faced.”

As it turns out, not so much. Also broadly out of step with events was NDP Leader Thomas Mulcair who fumed in question period earlier this month, “Does the prime minister understand why Canadians find it more than a little bit creepy that the prime minister wants to name this guy to protect their privacy.”

In contrast, Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau now comes off looking downright prescient. In his letter to the PM in late May, he wrote, “I have come to the conclusion that Daniel Therrien would be an excellent candidate for this position. . .His knowledge and experience, as well his distinguished record of public service will be of great benefit to Canadians.”

In fact, if Mr. Therrien’s initial performance is any indication, Canadians should rest a little more easily. 

Bills C-13 and S-4, which rewrites the regulations covering inter-company dissemination of user information, are time bombs that the Supremes have wisely sought to defuse. What’s more alarming, perhaps, than the proposed legislation is the government’s official response to the Court’s decision.

According to a Globe story, Justice Minister Peter MacKay claims that the ruling actually “backs up the government’s view because ‘voluntary disclosures do not provide legal authority for access to information without a warrant,‘ though the bill (C-13) allows police to get information without a warrant.”

Huh?

It is for reasons such as the foregoing bafflegab that individuals like Mr. Therrien are in great demand by democracies around the world. Their jobs are not to dance with power, but to push against it, especially where new communications technologies vastly expand the opportunities for unauthorized or explicitly illegal surveillance.

Yes, Ottawa officialdom, the honeymoon is indeed over.

 

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Jun 19 2014
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Economy

Running to the end of our rope

 

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In the race to nowhere, few places in Canada perform better than dear, old, fusty New Brunswick. In fact, when it comes to crossing the line that separates progress from perdition, ours is the Kenyan marathoner of provinces.

Don’t let a recent forecast from the Conference Board of Canada (CBC) fool you, either. That august body now predicts that New Brunswick’s economy is preparing to mount a turnaround, of sorts, this year.

Here’s the quote from the organization that’s setting certain politicos and pundits in the province all a twitter: “New investment is boosting the forestry sector. . .The provincial labour market, which has been hemorrhaging jobs over the last four years, is beginning to recover. Along with an improved investment outlook, consumer demand should pick up, allowing real GDP to advance by a modest 1.1 per cent this year.”

Note the preferred diction: The Board said “modest” growth, not “buoyant” or “great guns” or “blistering” or “spectacular” or even “moderate”. Other jurisdictions showing similar expansionary tendencies include the Czech Republic and Portugal.

Still, it was enough to encourage Blaine Higgs, the province’s minister of finance, who told the Saint JohnTelegraph-Journal, “We do see those same economic trends that are starting to turn. We bottomed out a few months ago. We saw the trends start to flatten out and start to shift upwards.”

Of course, that’s what GDP trends do; they. . .well, trend. The direction they take depends on the level of capital investment governments and/or the private sector pour into the economy, export performance and consumer spending. 

Fortunately, these indicators have been improving. But for how long?

New Brunswick’s ups and downs are nothing new. Still, over the years, we’ve grown inured to, even complacent with, certain conditions in our broad, social mosaic that contribute both directly and indirectly to our persistent economic vulnerability.

We have, for example, a real chip on our shoulder about what we think we have a right to receive from our various levels of government. Our ecosystems of entitlement are spectacularly intertwined and breathtakingly intricate. This has, in no mean way, pushed our long term public debt to an absurd $12 billion and our annual deficit to an effectively permanent $500 million.

Then, naturally, when governments start taking away our toys and begin cutting our playtime, we complain bitterly about the quality of political leadership, a habit of mind that inevitably leads to Premier David Alward’s ignoble showing in a recent Angus Reid Global poll on his popularity, compared with others in his class across Canada: second to last, at 29 per cent, behind Greg Selinger of Manitoba (26 per cent).

That level of acrimony reflects how stunningly distrustful we have become; how wary we have grown over the years of governments as faithful economic stewards. The consequences are almost tediously predictable.

A difficult, yet worthy, proposition four years ago to sell the province’s power utility and settle, in one fell swoop, $4 billion in longterm debt, mutates into a ridiculous debate over corporate patriation and sends the reigning Liberals into the wilderness.

The victorious Tories fare hardly better during their first term as they work to warm public attitudes toward hydraulic fracturing in the nascent shale gas industry – an industry that could one day employ hundreds of people and contribute millions of dollars to the economy and to provincial coffers in the form of taxes and royalties.

The issue literally blows up by the side of the road as protestors, echoing the views of many New Brunswickers, insist that the government can’t be trusted to mitigate the risks of the drilling technologies.

Meanwhile, we chug along, stupefyingly oblivious to the fact that we are now the proud owners of the highest outmigration rate among young people in Canada and one of the highest adult illiteracy rates in North America.

Oddly enough, New Brusnwick is also home to one of the highest concentrations of successful mentoring agencies in the country. 

Perhaps, then there’s hope. It may yet be within our means to turn the tide of this perennial race to nowhere.

 

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